ad ugly abortiod as that, with a head like a lubp of dothidg stuck upod dowhere, talk of swearidg to a shirt which he saw od a bad about half a bile off id the dark?"
"Half a mile," said Ninety-nine. "It was not a hundred yards."
"I dod't care if it were dot a huddred feet," returned Tom. "It wod't bake you a whit the less a fool."
"Don't call me a fool, if you please," said Ninety-nine, who didn't like it. "If I've done anything wrong, here's my number—Ninety-nine."
"Didety-dide!" cried Tom. "You ought to have didety-dide every bordidg before breakfast, to give you ad appetite for swearidg to a shirt."
"That is not the shirt which we saw," said the serjeant, addressing Ninety-nine, confidentially. "The one which we saw was much shorter than that. You see that comes down below the calves."
"He might have pulled it up, mightn't he, while he was running?"
"So he might," replied the serjeant. "He certainly might have done that."
"Besides," said Tom, who, during this colloquy, saw that neither his mother nor his father was satisfied, "is it codceivable that I could ever be so sedseless ad ass as to risk by deck upod that parapet! Why the copidg isd't bore thad a foot wide. He was ruddidg—ruddidg backwards add forwards, didd't you say?"
"Yes," replied the serjeant.
"I dod't believe a word of it. Doe bad could do it!—there's dot a bad lividg that would eved attebpt it! Look at the width of the stode and the height of the house! I'll bet a thousadd guideas, do bad cad be foudd to rud as you say you saw that bad rud alodg there. Take all St. Giles's—take all Wappidg—bridg all the sailors add bricklayers' labourers you like—take all the world—add you'll dot fidd a bad so lost—so utterly lost—to every sedse of dadger to do it."
"Certainly," said the serjeant, "I never could have believed it possible, if I had not myself seen it."
"You dever did see it," cried Tom. "Doe bad ever saw it. I see it dow clearly edough. I see the object which idduced you to say that you saw it."
"To what object do you allude," inquired the serjeant.
"Buddy," replied Tom; "Buddy! You thought as a batter of course that the goverdor would stadd sobethidg haddsome."
"I despise the insinuation," retorted the serjeant. "I say again, and am prepared to take my oath, that I saw a man running upon the coping of that parapet and enter the window above."
"Add do you bead to say, like your friedd Didety-dide there—the adibal!—that I was that bad."
"That," replied the serjeant, "I must leave."
"And don't call me an animal again," said Ninety-nine. "I'll not be called an animal by you or any other man."
